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But this is literally the entire point of the this paper. The sentence you just pasted was the the previous state of the art, this paper makes the point that they have now imaged them in cells (using i-motif specific antibodies).

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'in vitro' can mean 'in cells in a dish'. I think the previous state of the art was 'unsure if these exist in living cells' (could be wrong, but id be surprised if they did this exp in vivo). edit based on your comment above you probably have the paper and are in a better position to comment on this. I defer to op.

Yeah agreed (what in vitro means to different people is a whole other conversation :-P), but that sentence makes it pretty clear that by in vitro they mean not in cells (because it says, "and not inside cells"). Agreed, of course, that this doesn't necessarily mean it happens in cells in an organism (though in the authors' defense they do examine three different cell lines).

Edit: For clarity - all the in cell work is cultured cell lines and not cells taken from an animal model or in situ imaging.

Literally my only point was that 'this might not matter for biology because we've not even seen it in cells' is no longer true. It still might not matter for biology though!

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